Posted on 04/06/2005 8:58:14 AM PDT by Anti-Bubba182
OUR OPINION: We'd better start paying attention Over in Tombstone, Arizona, something called the "Minuteman Project" is underway. It calls for armed civilian volunteers to watch for illegal border crossings and report them to federal officials, and word Monday was that more than 500 people from all over the country answered a call from project organizers to show up Friday and begin to help patrol the border.
While you can put any spin you want on illegal immigration — and that spin has touched every point of the America's political and moral compass — the bottom line is that it's a severe and growing crises. We don't think the Minuteman Project will have a direct effect — volunteers won't be able to do much about stemming the daily tide — but it will help focus the nation's attention on the problem. Now, only the residents of states most affected by the illegal immigration — California, Arizona and Texas — have any real awareness of what's going on.
At the core of the problem is the political and economic morass that has made living in Mexico hell for its underclass, whose members make up most of the country's population. It was thought by some that when Vincente Fox was elected Mexico's president, he would institute reforms that would make life there more bearable. It hasn't happened, and so more and more young Mexicans, mostly male, are seeking work in the United States by crossing the border illegally.
Instead of reform, Fox encouraged Mexicans to skip over the border to the U.S., to take up life as illegal aliens — and send dollars back to Mexico. Ten percent of Mexican voters now live in America legally or illegally, but they account for 50 percent of Mexico's purchasing power. And they send home enough billions in foreign exchange to make the government in Mexico very comfortable financially.
According to the Interamerican Development Bank, they sent home $16.6 billion in 2004, up from $10.5 billion in 2000, the year Fox was elected. Fox has called these people "heroes" — encouraging United States banks to accept Mexican identification cards to ease money transfers in 2002 and permitting his government to print out booklets advising Mexicans how to get over the border illegally but safely by 2005.
American writer A.M. Mora y Leon said in The American Thinker the other day that, "The poverty, the exploitation by the migrant rackets, the permanent underclass status, the ease with which aliens can lose everything they've worked to build if they are apprehended by law enforcement is heartbreaking. These people (illegal aliens) are helpless."
As we said, we don't think the Minutemen will have any direct, immediate effect on the problem. Neither do they. What they do think is that their efforts will finally drive home the point to the American public that our porous southern border is vulnerable to infiltration by illegal immigrants, drug smugglers and potentially terrorists.
That last all by itself is reason enough for someone, somewhere, to finally start paying attention. Mr. Bush, are you listening?
Steve Williams
"Ten percent of Mexican voters now live in America legally or illegally, but they account for 50 percent of Mexico's purchasing power."
Why not pay US illegals in the currency of their home country? THAT will discourage their efforts to come here, work and send $$ home.
I like it! What's a peso worth now, about $.0000001?
no, part of the solution is to NOT PAY illegals... (meaning not to hire them, not hire them then not pay them..)
I will have no problem with mexicans coming to the US just as soon as we annex Mexico as the 51st state.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it, El Presidente Fox.
Annexing Mexico would be a bit like annexing the Sahara - why would you want to?
Actually it is currently a little more than 11 Pesos to the U.S. Dollar.
Why don't the Mexicans rise up and demand better? If the US and especially Canada can do it, why can't they? I just do not understand why they put up with it?
I definitely do not want to take over Mexico, the US does not need anymore states. I say seal the borders, no matter what it takes.
The female homeowner mentioned is this story has allowed the Minuteman Project volunteers to set up right on her front lawn. I went there last night to help the volunteers out. This liberal Democrat woman had cooked the best-tasting lasagna for the Minuteman folks and had them sit down for dinner.
I talked to her a bit about her impressions of the Minuteman Project and she related that she supports it. She said that she's met so many great people from so many areas of the country and so many different walks of life. She was impressed to see that it wasn't just a bunch of militia-types, but real, down-to-earth, good people who have become concerned by the lack of border security. She utterly rejected the media portrayal that these people are racist, gun-toting vigilantes forming a militia to hunt the poor Mexican migrant. She's seen it with her own two eyes and she knows that the media has been lying about the Minuteman Project all along.
I'll bet her story has been repeated across Cochise County as the volunteers stand out there, day and night, guarding our border and calling national and international attention to the border problem. Jim Gilchrist reminded all of the volunteers on day one that they are ambassadors from their states and ambassadors from the Minuteman Project to the local community. These good people have certainly taken that advice to heart and are making fast friends all over the San Pedro River Valley - well, except they're not too fondly thought of by the border intruders, human traffickers, drug smugglers, and their leftist enablers.
The free market is the problem. Mexicans are a source of cheap, reliable labor (ever see a highway construction site?). As such, they will expend every effort to come here as long as their economy is quasi third world. All these efforts (pot bellied old men in cammies "patrolling" the border, drones in the sky etc) will, at best, slow it down but never stop it as long as the demand exists.
Further, Mexicans view the American occupation of California, Arizona etc as that - an occupation that began barely a century and a half ago; hence "la reconquista" which is being accomplished very handily by the womb.
Surely, this is a problem. But the solution sure aint gonna be found in stopping them.
Viva Los Minutos Hombres!
Not sure that makes sense. Stopping illegal immigration would in fact, stop it.
It's ILLEGAL to hire them.
From all of the available evidence, I feel qualified to answer on his behalf: No he's not.
You and I are fully aware of that. However, it the people who are supposed to guard the border and enforce immigration laws are asleep at the switch, do you honestly think that the people who are supposed to bird-dog the employment of aliens are doing THEIR job?
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